Good Weekend

Last weekend (and pretty much all last week) I was not at my best, mom-wise (I think it all started with staying up too late Friday night watching 3 Idiots, which could be my new favorite movie, then staying up too late, and drinking too much wine, Saturday night hanging out with a friend, capped off by staying up too late Sunday night to watch the Downton Abbey finale), so I decided to concentrate on making up for it this weekend. 

First order of business: going to bed at a decent hour. 

Second: some spontaneous "me" time out in nature. 

Third: get the house clean in order.

Fourth: I felt so guilty about dissing the Magic Treehouse, I read all of "Mummies in the Morning" to E and Z (still loving all the comments on how you all have handled reading annoying books to kids; love the idea of books on tape; wish they could read to themselves, but they're still in the "Dick and Jane" stage, which, by the way, are wonderful first readers: very short chapters, lots of repetitive "dolche" words and delightful vintage illustrations; much better than some of those Step into Reading books we have).

Fifth: Craftiness. E, Z and I made some felted geodes, or "rainbow rocks" (directions here). I love playing with wool and hot, soapy water and these were super fun to make.

The best part was "cracking" them open after they dried to see what kind of fun patterns we made.

Here they are posing alongside a real geode M got for Christmas and which we just finally broke open with a hammer. Can you tell which is the real rock?

E added them to our dining table for Sunday night dinner (Which is the Sixth order of business: a big vat of macaroni and cheese I made Saturday night and which lasted two meals and about which not one person complained, even though I put green beans from the freezer in it).

And finally, C kept the boys outside most of Sunday making maple syrup (which is an activity I enjoy not in the least, for a variety of reasons) while I battled through an annotation for my next packet and fiddled with an essay I'm writing for fun (as a mental vacation from fiction).

I did some sewing on a project-in-progress I hope to share with you soon while the boys were in the tub and Z repented of his kicking and screaming over Little House in the Big Woods and asked me to reread chapter 1 (which I had read to E alone) and we made our way through the first several chapters by Sunday night. A good weekend, indeed. Hope that you had a good one as well.